Ageing (dis)gracefully!
Archive for May, 2006
Dan, Dan the photography man!
May 30th
Two?posts in one day? Am i mad? yes I am!
I keep getting emails from various photography agencies asking me to send my portfolio to them and/or arranging interviews with me! … not being funny but the extent my my photographic abilities is as you can see on this site – amateur at best! and with a mobile phone!
After a bit of digging around (well, i replied to one of the emails in a ‘wtf?’ kind of way) it seems that there is a professional photographer called Dan LawrAnce and he has the domain of www.danlawrance.co.uk …. the bugger! 
?So, as annoying as it is, I am probably going to change my email address from dan @ danlawrence.co.uk just to avoid the confusion/spam.
It’s a?harsh, harsh!?world we live in….
Feeling crap …so got a new home!
May 30th
Had an awful nights sleep last night, felt really rough all night and woke up this morning still feeling rough. Phoned work early and said I wouldn’t be in, then went back to bed ….. if I didn’t know any better I would swear I had a steaming hangover! … but I haven’t had a drink in days! :-/
When I got back up I realised I didn’t exactly have much to do today, so sat down at the pc and started fiddling… Decided that www.danlawrence.co.uk has been ‘Under Construction’ for far too long (6 months!). Initially I?got?it with the intention of making a?personal website.?After a few months of laying dormant I then built a home server and set the domain to point at it, the idea being that I could code php and play with sql and test it on my own server! This I actually did do, but it was a real waste of the domain name! …sure, it was fine for testing, but so is ‘localhost’!
I already had a blog (scarcely updated) on blogspot,?so decided today to install my own blogging software on the server and port all my old blog entries over ….hence what you are seeing here. So here it is, the domain name pointing at my new home on the web, all run from my trusty little home server …… I knew my 832k of upstream bandwidth was there for a reason!!
Played around a lot with this system today and have to say, I quite like it! Plenty of room for expansion via plugins etc ….so all good. Kind of makes me want to pick up my php/sql book and continue the learning …..which I may well do in a minute!
Steep Hills and NO BRAKES!
May 29th
Bank Holiday Monday today …so decided to go for a day out at Lynmouth. Its a small village just inside Devon (just outside of Somerset!) that was ravaged by a freak flood in 1952 ……very small, but the history of the place manages to draw quite a crowd! …parking was nigh on impossible, but we managed it in the end!
Had a walk around the village and?its blatantly very tourist-ey. Can imagine it being a complete ghost town in the winter months. Had some lunch in one of the many cafe’s and then went on Lynmouth to Lynton hillside railway! ….a creation by the Victorians to allow them to travel between both towns, which are seperated by about 300ft of cliff! ….so yes, i was hauled up 300ft of cliff in a rickety victorian rail carriage! much squeaking and grinding….Lucy looked petrified! bless her
When we got to the top I took this great picture:
Took this on my mobile phone! ….am amazed at the quality! This is a downsized version just for my blog, but the actual picture is mucho big and incredibly detailed….. very impressed! Will be using the camera part of this phone more methinks!
By far the most eventful part of the day was the car journey into and out of lynmouth! …its literally at sea level, so descent from the hills above was needed. The main problem with this was a hill with a gradient of 1 in 4! stupidly steep with twists and turns everywhere! … I tried using the gears to brake as much as possible, but still had NO BRAKES left when we got to the bottom of the hill! I braked foot to the floor and the car wouldn’t stop! scary stuff! luckily the carpark was not far so was able to park quite safely, wouldnt have been able to continue driving without any brakes, thats for sure! …. On the way back, going up the hills was just as much of a challenge …its not a pleasant sound to hear the car screaming in 2nd and 3rd gear up a stupidly steep hill! changing gear too soon meant the car would virtually grind to a halt… poor thing has done 125k miles, and is only a little 1.4 …..i felt sorry for it afterwards!
Anyway ….thats enough ranting for now 
I am still alive!
May 28th
Well, I wasn’t really dead …I just havent made a post for 5 months due to sheer laziness! Am going to make a concerted effort to keep this blog upto date with all of the amazing adventures I go through in my exciting little life
Just finished watching the Grand Prix of Monaco …. quite an interesting race with a rather predictable winner,in Fernando Alonso. He is however a welcome winner in my eyes after the many years of bore…i mean domination by Michael Schumacher (god I hate him!). Nice to see Coulthard up on the podium aswell …has been a long time coming.
Bank holiday weekend this weekend …so am gonna go out for a few beers tonight….. much deserved I think as I havent had a drink for a whole day!
